The present invention relates generally to a method and system for temporarily marking or altering traffic patterns for vehicles, and in particular to such a method and system which uses dissoluble markers that substantially disappear over a predetermined or a relatively short period of time.
During roadway maintenance operations, such as applying paint stripes to a roadway or filling cracks in the roadway, work crews normally move along the roadway at a steady but slow continuous pace, normally on the order of 5-15 miles per hour. During these operations, the work crew's trailing vehicle is normally a heavy truck that in essence acts as a barrier between tile work crew and cars or other vehicles approaching the work crew from the rear. Because the work crew is moving along the roadway at such a low speed, motorists often come upon the work crew unexpectedly and sometimes crash into the trailing heavy truck often resulting in death or serious injury.
In order to decrease the incidence of death and serious injury during such collisions, a device commonly referred to as a truck-mounted crash attenuator is attached to and extends away from the rear end of the trailing heavy truck. The crash attenuator is essentially a steel framework which is attached to the rear end of tile truck and extends approximately ten or more feet from the rear of the truck at about the grille level of an average car. When impacted, the crash attenuator collapses and decelerates the car to a stop over a significantly longer distance than if the motorist simply crashed into the rear of the trailing heavy truck. This elongated deceleration normally results in a destroyed crash attenuator and a damaged motor vehicle, but often spares the motorist from the potentially deadly impact of a relatively instantaneous stop. Nevertheless, even with the use of truck-mounted crash attenuators, motorists are often needlessly injured simply because they encounter the slowly moving roadway work crews unexpectedly without sufficient time to brake and avoid a collision. What is needed is an inexpensive way of alerting motorists that a slowly moving work crew is just ahead so that the motorist slows down before it is too late.
Foam marking systems have long been known and used in the farming industry. The most significant usage of foam markers in the farming industry relates primarily to the application of fertilizers to a field of crops. When applying fertilizers, it is desirable to evenly distribute the fertilizer over the area of the field but it is normally critical that no area of the field receive a double dose of fertilizer. In other words, each adjacent sweep over the field by the fertilizer vehicle must be contiguous but not overlapping the previous sweep so that no portion of the field receives a double dose of fertilizer. In order to avoid the double fertilizing problem, farmers attach a foam marker system, such as the RHS foam marker system Model No. MKR-5000-14, to the fertilizing apparatus. As the fertilizing vehicle travels along the field, globs of foam are dropped from the marker system onto the field at the extreme edge of the fertilizing sweep so that the farmer knows precisely where the fertilizer has and has not been applied. In each successive sweep of the field, the farmer uses the line of foam markers as a guide for preventing the successive fertilizer sweeps from overlapping one another.
The present invention comprises a method and system which utilizes foam marker systems which are similar in construction to the foam marker systems used in the farming industry. However, unlike the farming applications, the present invention contemplates use of foam markers to alert third parties to a potential road hazard or parking location for their vehicle rather than as a guide for the same person who laid down the markers as in the case for fertilizing applications.